Crypto Advisors
Crypto Advisors: How to Judge One, Including Us
Anyone can call themselves a crypto advisor. Very few will tell you who pays them, what they hold, or what happened the last time they were badly wrong. This page names the people who would be working with you, and gives you the six questions that separate an advisor worth listening to from an account with an opinion. Put them to us, and to everybody else on your shortlist.
The Category
Three Different Things Get Called a Crypto Advisor
The word does a lot of work in this market and the three groups it covers are not interchangeable. Working out which one you are talking to is the first thing to do, and it takes about a minute.
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A licensed financial adviser
Able to give you personal advice, meaning advice that takes your own objectives, financial situation and needs into account, with the licensing and obligations that go with it. ASIC keeps public registers of who is licensed, who is an authorised representative and who has been banned.
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A research and education firm
Publishes analysis, frameworks and market commentary for a general audience, and can hand you its reasoning and teach you a process. It cannot tell you what to do about your particular circumstances, because it is not assessing them. This is what Collective Shift is.
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Somebody with an audience
A channel, a newsletter or a group chat with a following and no obligations attached. Some of it is genuinely good. None of it knows anything about you, and the money usually arrives from somewhere other than the people reading it.
Which one we are, stated plainly
Collective Shift is the second kind. We do not provide personal financial advice, and nothing we publish takes your objectives, financial situation or needs into account. We do not manage money, we never take custody of your assets, and we do not place trades. If you want advice about your own position, that is a job for a licensed financial adviser and we will tell you so on the call.
The Test
Six Questions That Separate an Advisor From an Account With an Opinion
There is no honest list of the best crypto advisors, because everybody who publishes one puts themselves on it. What there is, is a short set of questions a good advisor answers immediately and a bad one cannot answer at all. Ask us these. Ask everybody else on your shortlist the same six.
| What to ask | What a straight answer looks like | Our answer |
|---|---|---|
| Can you name them, and can you check the name? | Real people with photographs, roles and profile pages, standing behind a company you can look up on a government register. A first name and an avatar is not a team. | Every person on our team page is named, given a role, given a written biography and given their own page, and three of them, our founder included, have a photograph as well. The company behind them is Collective Shift Pty Ltd, ABN 78 650 977 325, an Australian private company registered since 11 June 2021. Meet the team |
| What do they say they can and cannot do? | A plain statement of what is being provided, and a licence position you can verify on a public register rather than accept on the page it is written on. | Our published position is that everything we produce is factual information only, does not take your personal objectives, circumstances or needs into account, and does not constitute financial advice. The trust page states it in our own words and links to the registers you can check us against. Read the position |
| Who pays them? | One revenue line, and one you can see. If the money arrives from the projects being covered, from affiliate deals or from a position taken before publication, you are reading marketing with a chart on it. | Our published position is that we do not accept payment to feature a coin or a project, and that coverage is not for sale. We do not publish a full breakdown of what the business earns, which makes this the question on the list we would most expect you to put to us directly. See what members buy |
| Do they show the reasoning, or only the call? | The argument, not just the conclusion. If you cannot see why a view was formed you cannot tell when it stops being true, and you will hold the position long after the reason for it has gone. | Research is published with the reasoning attached, and fortnightly live workshops and Ask the Analysts are where you can put the argument back to the person who made it. How the research gets made |
| Do they publish what they own? | A written disclosure naming the person and the assets, updated on a stated schedule, with a materiality threshold you can actually read. | Every full-time employee and content contributor discloses material crypto holdings, meaning any position worth AU$2,000 or more. The employee register is republished every week with a change log. Open the register (opens in a new tab) |
| What do they do when they are wrong? | Being wrong is a normal event in this asset class. Hiding it is not. Look for criticism they are not able to delete, and a refund position written down somewhere other than a sales page. | Our reviews sit on a Trustpilot profile we do not control, the critical ones included, and our refund policy is a published document rather than a promise in a headline. It is conditional and pro rata, and it sits on top of your rights under Australian Consumer Law. Read the reviews |
Written to be answerable by any crypto advisor, us included. Everything in the right-hand column is checkable from the link beside it rather than on our say so. If somebody cannot answer these six without changing the subject, you have already learned what you needed to know.
The Test Most Fail
Judge an Advisor by What They Own, Not What They Say
The quickest way to weigh a crypto opinion is to find out whether the person giving it holds the asset. Almost nobody publishes that. Here is our position on it, and the register lives on our main site rather than being copied onto this page, so what you open is always the current one.
- A material holding is any position worth AU$2,000 or more.
- Full-time employee holdings are republished every week, with a change log naming what changed and when the next update is due.
- Content contributor holdings are updated quarterly.
- The register names the person and the assets, so you can weigh any piece of research against what its author owns.
- We do not accept payment to promote a coin or a project. Coverage is not for sale.
The People Behind the Research
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Matt Willemsen
Director of Research
Matt leads Collective Shift's research desk: the daily briefings, weekly market updates, asset deep-dives and the analysis behind the flagship portfolio.
Read More -
Ben Simpson
Founder & CEO
Ben founded Collective Shift in 2020 with a simple aim: help people approach digital assets with more care, context and independence.
Read More -
Travis Thomas
COO
Travis is Collective Shift's Chief Operating Officer and a behavioural performance coach, pairing operational leadership with investor-psychology coaching.
Read More
Proof
Check All of That Without Taking Our Word for It
Four places on this site where the claims above are backed by something you can open, and three of the four link straight back out to a source we do not control.
- Free
The whole team
Every person who works here, with a role, a written biography and a page of their own, plus a photograph for three of them so far.
See the roster - Free
Ben Simpson, founder
His TEDx talk, his interviews and the podcast appearances, each one linked to the original rather than described, plus the holdings register he appears on.
Read the profile - Free
Press and recognition
Every press credit, award and appearance we claim, listed with a link to the outlet or the awarding body so you can read the original.
See the coverage - Free
Trust and transparency
Company registration, the advice boundary in our own words, and six checks you can run on any Australian crypto business without going through us.
Run the checks
Common Questions About Crypto Advisors
What is a crypto advisor?
In everyday use it covers three quite different things: a licensed financial adviser who can give you personal advice, a research and education business that publishes analysis and teaches a process, and anybody with an audience and an opinion. Only the first can take your own circumstances into account, and the third has no obligations at all.
Collective Shift is the second. We publish research and teach a portfolio process, and members apply it to their own situation. That distinction is not marketing positioning, it is the whole shape of what you are buying.
Who are the best crypto advisors?
Nobody can answer that honestly, including us, because everybody who publishes a ranking of crypto advisors puts themselves somewhere near the top of it. Treat any such list as an advertisement until you can see who paid for it.
What you can do is apply the same six tests to everyone on your shortlist: can you name them and check the name, do they state plainly what they can and cannot do, who pays them, do they show their reasoning or only their conclusions, do they publish what they own, and what do they do when they are wrong. The answers are usually very quick to get, and the ones you cannot get are the informative part.
How do I check whether a crypto advisor is licensed?
Ask them directly, then check the answer rather than accepting it. ASIC maintains free public registers of Australian Financial Services licensees, authorised representatives and people who have been banned from the industry. The Australian Business Register will tell you whether the company behind the trading name is real and still active. The MoneySmart site run by ASIC explains which crypto assets are covered by Australian financial services regulation and which are not, and it is worth ten minutes before you act on anybody.
Our own position is stated on our trust page and it is about conduct rather than status: we do not provide personal financial advice, nothing we publish takes your objectives, financial situation or needs into account, we never take custody of assets and we do not place trades. If you want advice about your specific position, that is a job for a licensed financial adviser and we will say so.
What do crypto advisory services usually include?
At the research and education end of the market, usually four things: published analysis and market commentary, a framework for building and sizing a portfolio, some form of live access to the people producing the research, and educational material for the parts you have not covered yet. What varies is how much individual attention from an analyst comes with it, and that is normally what the price is actually buying.
Ours are delivered through a membership rather than billed by the hour. If you want the scoped engagement that produces a written plan, that is our crypto consulting page. If you want the standing relationship that keeps you following it, that is crypto coaching. They are different purchases and we would rather you picked the right one.
Should a crypto advisor tell me what they own?
Yes, and the ones who will not are telling you something anyway. If somebody is pointing you at an asset, whether they hold it changes how you should read the argument, and no amount of analysis quality substitutes for knowing.
Every full-time employee and content contributor here discloses material crypto holdings, meaning any position worth AU$2,000 or more. The employee register is republished weekly with a change log naming what changed, and contributor holdings are updated quarterly. It is a public page and you can read any piece of our research alongside it.
What happens if my crypto advisor is wrong?
They will be, repeatedly, and so will anybody else you ask. Crypto assets are volatile, no analysis survives every market, and the useful question is not whether a view was wrong but whether you were told the reasoning early enough to notice it breaking.
What you should look for is criticism the business cannot delete and a refund position written down somewhere other than a sales page. Our reviews are on a Trustpilot profile we do not control, and our money back guarantee is set out in a published refund policy: it is conditional rather than automatic, refunds are pro rata against what you have already accessed, and it sits in addition to your rights under Australian Consumer Law.
General information only. Nothing on this page takes your objectives, financial situation or needs into account, and it is not personal financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile and you can lose money.
Put the Six Questions to Us
30 to 45 minutes with an analyst. Bring the list from this page, ask every one of them, then ask whoever else is on your shortlist the same six and compare what comes back.
30 to 45 Minute Strategy Call. No obligation.
- 14-Day Money Back Guarantee
- Named Analysts, Public Profiles
- Weekly Holdings Disclosure
Decided we might be the right people?
This page is about judging advisors. The next two are about the work. Consulting is the scoped engagement that produces a written plan, and at Platinum and above a review of the portfolio you already hold. Coaching is the standing relationship that decides whether you follow it.